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[Synoptic-L] Fallicies

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Douglas Fitzpatrick

Stephen Craig Miller wrote :

Message 1 of 1
, Dec 1, 2000

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Stephen Craig Miller wrote : <<There is no
real "fallacy" here, only your accusation of a "fallacy." In all seriousness,
can you imagine Tuckett blushing over the quotations of his you presented and
saying: "Opps, I wrote that?">

Perhaps not a blush but at least a retreat:

"Contemporary debate has highlighted the weak and
inconclusive nature of some of the arguments in the past that have been used to
promote the two-source theory. This applies to some of the more "formal"
arguments referring to global patterns in the overall set of arguments.
For example, in arguing for Markan priority, some have appealed to the fact that
nearly all of Mk is paralled in Mt or Lk or both. But all this shows is
that some literary relationship exists. It does not prove that the only
possibility is that Mk's Gospel was the source of Mt and Lk.
Similarly, the much discussed appeal to the failure of Mt and Lk ever, or hardly
ever, to agree against Mk in order and wording does not prove that Mt and Lk
independently used Mk as a source; it only shows that Mk is some kind of middle
term (Butler's term) between the other two in any pattern of
relationships". (Tuckett, "The Synoptic Problem", New Interpreters
Bible)

This was AFTER both he and Neirynck had abandoned
Streeter's argument from order of pericopes and adopted Lachmann's method of
comparing only two Gospels at a time, claiming that that the results thus
obtained now "constitutes the main reason for positing Marcan priority"
(Neirynck, "The Synoptic Problem" in NJBC 589). The logical fallacies upon
which Lachmann's method depends have subsequently been unmasked by, among
others, David Neville and David Dungan. By this point
Tuckett seems to contained his arguments in favor of the two source theory to
what Neville called "compositional" arguments: "... comparing different
texts, asking which way the tradition is likely to have
developed." (Tuckett as quoted by Dungan, History of the Synoptic Problem,
389)

Tuckett seems to me to have lost any claim to rigor by
claiming that the "most important kind of argument" supporting the two source
hypothesis is the subjective divination of literary trajectory.

Douglas Fitzpatrick

Houston Graduate School of Theology

“If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be called
research, would it?”A.
Einstein

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